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Saying No to Meciar

Updated Sept. 30, 1998 12:01 a.m. ET

Germans weren't the only Central Europeans choosing a government this weekend; the citizens of land-locked, mountainous Slovakia also went to the polls. Up to now, elections in post-Communist Slovakia were a perfunctory matter of confirming the rule of Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, who has served for all but six months of the past five years. This time, however, it appears that Slovaks have decided they've had enough of Mr. Meciar's heavy-handed rule.

Mr. Meciar's nationalist Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) was still the largest single vote-getter, but it is unlikely he will be able to form a government. His party was less than one percentage point ahead of the free-market Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK), which garnered 26.3% of the electorate. Together with three other parties that have pledged their support, the SDK can put together a 93-seat majority in the 150-seat parliament and form a government. The prime minister seems to know he hasn't a chance--he has not commented on the election results and yesterday some workers in his own party said they did not even know his whereabouts.

By supporting the SDK, Slovaks have voted to give economic freedom a chance at a time when many in the emerging world--and even some in the advanced economies--are blaming open markets for the dislocation of the past 15 months. But the economic message of the coalition--which includes such disparate groups as the former Communists and an ethnic Hungarian party--is not clear. The four parties are united only by their hatred for Mr. Meciar's autocratic style, and their winning campaign strategy seems to have been to challenge his claim that Slovaks are unconcerned about their international image.

Both the European Union and NATO had excluded the country from early entry negotiations because of the weakness of democratic institutions in Slovakia and the Meciar government's unwillingness to work with international organizations. When the EU called on Mr. Meciar to respect minority languages he snapped back that no one could give him ultimatums; when the U.S. State Department spoke of "credible allegations" that his secret police spied on opposition politicians, he charged that there was an international conspiracy against him. In contrast, SDK leader Mikulas Dzurinda, who could become the next prime minister, has promised that Slovakia would emulate the best of the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary and its people would become good world citizens. This ultimately appealed more to voters than Mr. Meciar's strategy of importing glamorous actors and supermodels like Gerard Depardieu and Claudia Schiffer to town to help his flagging campaign.

The new government's first responsibility will be to nurture democratic institutions and the rule of law, left neglected during the Meciar years. But there is also much work to be done on the economy. On the plus side, Slovakia has enjoyed GDP growth of about 6% a year and around 80% of the economy is said to be in private hands. But critics say the Meciar government fueled growth in the lead-up to the election by pouring money into infrastructure projects and has handed state assets to cronies of the ruling party. Slovakia's foreign debt stands at $11.3 billion, against foreign reserves of only $3.3 billion as of last Wednesday, having fallen from $3.4 billion in one week. At the current trade rate, that's just over three months' worth of imports, the benchmark that investors consider critical.

Investors will probably sit on their hands until the picture in Bratislava becomes clearer. Indeed, the opposition warned yesterday that any deals cut with the Meciar government from here on will be declared void. Parliament does not need to reconvene for another month, and with Mr. Meciar temporarily AWOL, it is not clear when the new government will be in place. There hasn't been a president since March, and the constitution at the moment provides for parliament to elect the head of state. The opposition, however, has long wanted to have an elected presidency, and Mr. Meciar could in theory run for that post. We will know then the measure of his appeal to all Slovaks. For the moment, though, it appears that his magnetism has lost some of its force.